An Account of the Bell Rock Light-House: Including the Details of the Erection and Peculiar Structure of That Edifice; to Which Is Prefixed a Historical View of the Institution and Progress of the Northern Light-HousesStevenson, Robert
History
An Account of the Bell Rock Light-House: Including the Details of the Erection and Peculiar Structure of That Edifice; to Which Is Prefixed a Historical View of the Institution and Progress of the Northern Light-Houses
Stevenson, Robert
Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland); Lighthouses -- Scotland
Having now taken notice of the works of the Light-house Board, so far
as they have been completed, up to and including part of the year 1823.
We may farther advert to the Light-house on the Rhins of Ilay, founded
on the 23d of August last. The Northern Light-houses accordingly amount
to seventeen, erected at fourteen stations; and besides these, there
are the Beacons of North Ronaldsay and the Carr Rock. The position of
these establishments has not been chosen in regard to their respective
distances from each other, but agreeably to the commercial importance
and dangers connected with particular parts of the coast. Six of them,
for instance, are on the Friths of Forth and Clyde, at not more than
from 20 to 25 miles apart; while Kinnaird-Head, on the east coast,
is about 72 miles from the Bell Rock, and 70 miles from the Pentland
Skerries. The Light-house upon Island Glass, is about 130 miles
south-west from the Pentland Skerries, and 120 miles northward from the
Rhins of Ilay, being a stretch of 250 miles of coast, with only one
Light-house intervening. It must therefore be obvious, that fourteen
Light-house stations, which include two on the Isle of Man, are too
few for the Scottish coast, rendered formidable and dangerous, by a
vast number of islands and sunken rocks. The Commissioners have still,
accordingly, a wide field of operations before them, which they are
gradually occupying, as their funds will admit, and as the demands of
navigation and commercial intercourse seem to require. In the Appendix,
No. I. notice is taken of the most prominent points of land on the
coast, which have been brought under consideration as fit Stations for
additional Light-houses; and of these, one at Buchan-Ness, on the east
coast, has already been fixed on by the Board.
_Constitution of the Board, and System of Management._
[Sidenote: Constitution of the Board.]
The affairs of the Northern Light-houses are managed by the
Commissioners named in the different acts already noticed; but the
direction of the whole concerns of the establishment almost entirely
devolves upon the Commissioners resident in Edinburgh, viz. The
Lord Advocate and Solicitor-General, the Lord Provost, and Senior
Magistrate of that City, and the different Sheriffs, Commissioners _ex
officio_, who attend the Courts of Law. They hold frequent meetings,
and bestow their time and labour without any salary or remuneration
whatever. At their Meetings, all matters falling under the economy,
and connected with the arrangement of the Light-houses, are regulated;
full powers being conferred upon them as a Board to erect and maintain
such additional Light-houses as they shall deem necessary; so that
the system in this respect will at no very distant period be rendered
complete.
[Sidenote: Rate of Duties.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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